Christopher Poole
Christopher Poole, known online as "moot," is the founder of the influential image-sharing website 4chan, which he launched in 2003 at the age of fifteen. Originally inspired by the Japanese site 2chan, 4chan began as a platform for anime and manga enthusiasts but has since expanded to encompass a wide range of topics. Poole is recognized for advocating online anonymity and privacy rights, aiming to foster a culture of free expression and collaboration. His efforts earned him the title of Time magazine’s Most Influential Person of 2008 in an online poll, a nomination that highlighted both his impact on internet culture and the community-driven nature of the vote.
After stepping down as 4chan's administrator in 2015, Poole went on to establish a media remix site called Canvas, which promotes similar values of anonymity. Throughout his career, he has participated in various speaking engagements, including at TED conferences, where he discusses the importance of online privacy in an increasingly invasive digital landscape. Despite his public persona, Poole maintains a level of personal privacy, sharing little about his life outside of his online identity. His work continues to resonate within the broader discussions of internet culture, privacy, and the evolving nature of online communication.
Subject Terms
Christopher Poole
Founder of 4chan
- Born: c. 1988
- Place of Birth: New York, NY
Primary Company/Organization: 4chan
Introduction
Christopher “moot” Poole is the founder of the Internet image-sharing board 4chan and the online image remix site Canvas (URL canv.as). Poole was declared Timemagazine's Most Influential Person of 2008 in an online poll. A strong proponent of online anonymity and privacy rights, he speaks at conferences and on panels as an advocate of free online culture.
Early Life
Christopher Poole, also known as moot (always with a lower-case m), was born in 1988 in New York. Little else is known about him, since he intentionally keeps his private life and his public “moot” persona separate—there has even been speculation as to whether or not Christopher Poole is his real name.
He is the child of divorced parents and spent most of his youth in suburban Westchester County, New York. Poole briefly attended Virginia Commonwealth University to major in anthropology and sociology in 2009 but dropped out after only a few semesters. His father, Tom Poole, described him as a “bit obsessive” in a 2008 Wall Street Journal article, explaining that as a young boy Chris once built a water-cooled computer in his spare time.
Life's Work
Inspired by the Japanese image-sharing board 2chan, Poole founded 4chan in October 2003, when he was fifteen years old, and funded the site's storage with his mother's credit card. Originally focusing on Japanese anime and manga—and Otaku culture generally—the site has expanded over the years to include forums for physical fitness, automobiles, literature, and many other subjects.
4chan's anonymous user community has become a significant cultural force in the twenty-first century. Users post with complete anonymity, and there is no archive of site activity. This gives users tremendous freedom to collaborate, conspire, and communicate. This freedom is noteworthy for two reasons in particular: the proliferation of Internet memes—phrases, images, and ideas that pervade online culture, such as “lolcats” and “Rickrolling”—and anonymous “hacktivism”—a collaboration of technologically savvy Internet users working together to coordinate denial-of-service attacks on offending websites as well as real-life protests, usually against supporters of Internet censorship. While both phenomena existed before the inception of 4chan, it is on 4chan that the phenomena matured into a more legitimate form of culture.
Despite being one of the most popular sites on the Internet, 4chan has not proved to be commercially viable. In the early months of its existence, hosting and bandwidth costs were partly covered by donations, but in 2005 Poole began running advertisements on the site both to raise money for its operation and to reify his commitment to keeping the site free for everyone to use. Because of the often controversial content posted to the website, advertisers have remained wary of 4chan and have tended to stay away.
In a 2009 Internet poll, “moot” was named Time magazine's World's Most Influential Person of 2008. It was in the process of this nomination that Poole, who had previously only gone by his online alias moot, revealed his real name. Additionally, the competition was suspected of being rigged by enthusiastic 4chan users who apparently managed, through careful manipulation of votes, to spell out two popular memes (MARBLECAKE ALSO THE GAME) as an acrostic using the first letter of each of the nominees' names.
The Time magazine nomination introduced a new stage in Poole's career: that of Internet privacy activist and cultural analyst. This led to a number of speaking engagements beginning in 2009, when he spoke at the Paraflows Symposium in Vienna, Austria, to discuss the relationship between 4chan's crowd mentality and meme generation.
In 2010, Poole spoke at the annual TED conference in order to stress the importance of anonymity and online privacy as cultural forces and as conduits of innovation. At that talk, he portrayed 4chan as a sort of antithesis to more personally invasive sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which require full user profiles.
Also in 2010, Poole gave testimony in the trial of David Kernell, who had hacked the e-mail accounts of former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her daughter, Bristol. Poole defined and explained much of the activity and terminology used on the 4chan boards and was instrumental in helping the court to explain the coded language of the evidence in the trial.
Using $625,000 in funds collected through venture capitalist and angel investors in 2010, Poole launched a new website, Canvas (or, per its URL, Canv.as) in 2011. Like 4chan, this site encourages anonymity, but as a “media remix” site, it maintains a tone and intent that are markedly different. In 2012, Canv.as was in open beta testing.
In 2015, Poole stepped down as 4chan's administrator after more than eleven years, and he sold the site to Japanese internet entrepreneur Hiroyuki Nishimura. In 2016 Poole went to work for Google to help found its internal incubator, Area 120. He then moved on to work on Google Maps. He left Google in 2021.
Personal Life
Little is known about Poole's private life. He is an online privacy and anonymity advocate who very much exemplifies his own ideals. He announced his real name only when, in 2008, he was nominated as Time magazine's World's Most Influential Person. He continues to speak out in favor of online privacy and anonymity at college campuses such as New York University, Yale University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as conferences such as the annual TED talks. One of his friends is Christina Xu, from the Awesome Foundation and the Institute of Higher Awesome.
Bibliography
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Chen, Adrian. “4chan Attack Brings down MPAA Website.” Gawker.com. 18 Sept. 2010. Web. 25 July 2012.
Dibbell, Julian. “Radical Opacity.” Technology Review. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sept. 2010. Web. 25 July 2012.
Elias, Jennifer. “4chan Founder Chris Poole Has Left Google.” CNBC 122 Apr. 2021, www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/4chan-founder-chris-poole-moot-has-left-google.html. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.
Fisher, Ken. “4chan's Moot Takes Pro-Anonymity to TED 2010.” arstechnica. 11 Feb 2010. Web. 25 July 2012.
Hesse, Monica. “A Virtual Unknown: Meet ‘moot,’ the Secretive Internet Celeb Who Still Lives with Mom.” Washington Post Online. 17 Feb. 2009. Web. 25 July 2012.
Isaac, Mike. "4chan Message Board Sold to Founder of 2Channel, a Japanese Web Culture Pioneer." The New York Times, 21 Sept. 2015, bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/4chan-sells-to-japanese-web-culture-pioneer-2channel/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2019.
Jeffries, Adrianne. “From the Creator of 4chan Comes the More Mature Canvas.” Observer.com. 31 Jan. 2011. Web. 28 July 2012.
Landers, Chris. “Serious Business: Anonymous Takes on Scientology (and Doesn't Afraid of Anything).” Citypaper.com. 2 Apr. 2008. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.
Singel, Ryan. “War Breaks Out between Hackers and Scientology: There Can Be Only One.” Wired.com. 23 Jan. 2008, www.wired.com/2008/01/anonymous-attac/. Web. 29 July 2012.
"Time Poll Crowns 4chan Founder Moot 'Most Influential Person'." Los Angeles Times, 27 Apr. 2009, www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/technology-blog/story/2009-04-27/time-poll-crowns-4chan-founder-moot-most-influential-person. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.